Deadly Games
by ApatheticAvatar
Summary: When Sora goes exploring in a new world, he gets a little more than he bargained for. AU, zombie world. Rated M just in case for some of the imagery.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimers: Kingdom Hearts, Disney, Final Fantasy, and all related media do not belong to me. All original worlds and characters, however, do and I would like very much to be told if you decide to use any of them in related fanart or fanfiction if that ends up becoming a desire of yours. If anything within the story seems familiar, I may have used references to other games and/or media as inspiration. If they are yours and you wish to have a credit, please PM me and I will add your name to this disclaimer. Please support the official releases.**

 **Also... Any questions that you may have on the story (it will be released each Sunday until completion), please either PM me or write it in a review so I may clarify for you. If many people have the same question, I'll simply include them in a small FAQ at the bottom of the following chapter. Please feel free with all criticism, but any flaming will be ignored and its writer either blocked or reported. Thank you very much, and I hope you enjoy.**

* * *

Chapter One

Stumbling through the darkness, Sora can barely see through the heavy canopy of trees above him and around him. He shivers violently. His sleeve is soaked with blood, his face scratched deeply with claw marks. Even so, he does not speak, not even to call out for help... not that he would have been able to through the mouthful of liquid.

But he can't spit out the blood, not even when the metallic taste threatens to make him throw up the last of the remaining contents of his stomach. They're too close. He has to keep running. He has to get out of here! They might smell it, they might even be able to track him through the splatter...

Sora looks around in fear, wondering what the darkness is hiding from him. To his terrified mind, every shadow on the trees is an enemy; every sound, every twig breaking in the distance is one more thing to run from.

All he wants is to sit down and let them take him. He's had enough. He's had enough of running from them. He's had enough of slamming into trees because he can't see them when he flies through the forest until he's exhausted and unable to stay in the air anymore. He's had enough of tripping over tree roots and nearly giving himself black eyes. He's had enough of getting winded from the mile-long runs he has to take. _Enough_ of falling down and _enough_ of choking on blood from accidentally biting his tongue whenever one of the monsters startles him back into charging blindly into the forest again.

He just wants to sit down and let them take him.

The realization of that is almost enough to make Sora throw up from sheer principle. His breathing briefly stops when the full ramifications of his thoughts sinks in, the idea of him just quietly dying here on this world alone. It's tempting, _ridiculously_ tempting, and it makes him sick to find himself capable of such a thing... If he'd been capable of truly hating himself, he'd be doing so now. Even so, he starts trembling with a little more fright and forces his thoughts onto something else rather than explore this previously unknown and darker part of him. Not only have these monsters taken his physical energy, they've also taken his mental strength? Just what _are_ these things?

How did the creatures that are currently plaguing him appeared in this world? Who... or even more terrifying in his mind, _what_ could make something like them them? Have they always been there? Where are the inhabitants of this world?

Why did he _have_ to convince Riku into exploring it on his own for a while? Why did Sora have to say that taking everyone else to Yen Sid's for training is more important than checking on a world that had been explored already many years ago?

Sora remembers claiming that he could handle whatever this small world could throw at him. That he's fought Heartless, he's defeated the Organization, he's held his own against the Nightmare dream eaters. He's a good fighter, even capable of going toe to toe with King Mickey and Master Yen Sid from time to time! Magic's easy for him, combat magic and healing magic only some of the many tricks up his sleeve. Checking on the residents of Gray Rock would have been easy and a bit of a break from the relentless training.

If it had been Heartless or Nobodies or even creatures on level with the Organization, it'd be a piece of cake. But nothing he's gone up against could have prepared him for these... these, these _monsters_.

He wants desperately to wake up. It feels so much like a nightmare. He'll give anything to wake up in his bed covered in sweat from a bad dream than to spend another moment in this dank forest hiding from those creatures. He wants to be home safe in his bed so much... but walking and running is all that matters right now.

All Sora can do is keep moving forward.

He shakes his head and wipes a sweat-soaked strand of hair out of his eyes. For a moment, he is silent, listening into the darkness around him. He hears nothing but his own labored breathing, his own rapid heartbeat pounding inside his chest. With that the only thing in earshot, Sora allows himself to spit out his mouthful of blood and falls weakly to his knees. He leans against a tree. The bark is rough against the back of his head but Sora cannot find a better location to rest.

The moment his eyes close, Sora hears the echoes of the monsters' voices wailing in his ears as he quickly falls into dreams...

* * *

 _When he first arrived in the small town of Grey Rock, Sora had assumed it had been plagued by a group of Heartless. It'd been years, of course, since the Heartless had ravaged this world according to reports given to the King by Even and Ienzo. It had come back just a while ago, a little after Sora had defeated the Seeker of Darkness, but no one had bothered to see if everything was alright yet. His entire mission here was to figure out if there were any of the Heartless (or even Nobodies) left and get rid of them. Then he'd "RTC" as Lea jokingly put it, be picked up by Riku, and then fly to the Tower for the second week of training._

 _There had been no children playing in the streets, all remaining shutters were shut tight against the elements, and no animals could be heard. He was alone. As he walked throughout the town and quietly read the signs and posters proclaiming the gentle rule of the new queen that were nailed to every door he finds, his footsteps and his voice were the only sounds to echo throughout the streets._

 _The smiling face of the Queen, a girl only a year or two younger than Sora himself, was the only image of humanity he even saw in the town. Her blue eyes seemed to follow him from within the signs, her painted red smile encouraging him to move forward. In reality, her image had stayed still on the paper. Here, she nodded at him and laughed inaudibly while she pointed the way forward, skipping a path between the posters and flickering in and out of them as he continued._

 _The sun beat down upon Sora and he had to shield his eyes against the bright light. When he finally got used to it, he turned to see the girl Queen gone from her posters, the writing wiped from them and blank save for a symbol of a black crown._

 _His footsteps had been the only sound, the only sound through the empty streets as he walked and the silence was deafening..._

 _It wasn't like his usual dreams, full of colors and explosions of sound and faint ideas of smell and taste... no, this was muted, strangely a warped memory rather than imagined. Ever since his Mastery Exam, his dreams had become so much clearer..._

 _He ran his hands over the doors of the empty streets, over the signs, his lips working in a failed attempt to get noise out. But the silence was in him, too, even though he knew that in reality he had been calling out to people in the houses lining the road. His eyes darted around the small space, looking for children but everything was silent, deafeningly silent as he walked..._

* * *

Sora jolts awake, suddenly looking up into the face of one of the creatures that had been chasing him. The once human stares down at him in silence. For a moment, neither moves nor breathes. Then the high screech of dying vocal cords rips through its mouth and the creature bends down towards him, clawed hands reaching for the deliciously sweet meat of Sora's living flesh.

A panicked moment later, Sora is the one standing and the monster is the one lying on the ground.

The Keyblade is again stained with dark blood and Sora bolts back through the forest, already gone by the time that the severed head hits the forest floor in a spray of rotting leaves.

* * *

Sora had smiled when he found the man standing in the doorway. Eager to make a new friend, he had walked right up to him with a cheerful greeting. When the man didn't turn around, Sora hadn't thought that maybe there was something wrong with him. He had just tapped on his shoulder, asking him what was wrong and if there was anything he could do to help. After all, Sora'd seen plenty of people traumatized by a family member or a friend taken by the Heartless or hurt by the Nobodies. He had just assumed that it was the same for this man.

He hadn't been prepared for the man letting out a loud, agonized moan and slowly shuffling around to look at him. The man's eyes had been dulled over with gray cataracts and splattered with flecks of scarlet. No trace of the familiar yellow of Darkness. Instead, there had been brown and black stains around its mouth and another scream came out of its throat.

Sora's instincts had warned him to run.

But his better nature had prompted him to ask again if everything was alright. He had hesitated to fight, in fear of hurting someone who had been injured. He had still reached out to him and asked again if he was hurt.

It was only when the man had almost taken a bite out of him that Sora finally retaliated and bashed him with the Keyblade. It was later that he realized that he had had an incredibly lucky break in having hit him in the head instead of the much more accessible chest. The only way to take these things down, as he discovered much later in an enormous battle involving a great deal of ineffective fire magic and far more reliable blizzardaga attacks, was to aim for the head.

But then, when he had first discovered the creatures, all Sora knew was that a human head shattered and burst quite easily under a Keyblade.

And he ran.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two

His fingers shake violently as Sora falls against a wall, struggling to even breathe. Even his _teeth_ hurt from the exertion and again, he feels the urge to throw up. The only good part of this world is that the monsters tended to be alone and far apart. They don't seem to like groups and instead wandered around in pairs or small parties of less than six in a clustered area.

Of course, if they scream, they call more of them to him and the fact that they normally roamed alone quickly becomes meaningless.

His eyes flood with tears, the dark blue filling with fear as he stares off into nothing, struggling to wrap his mind around what he had seen. This isn't the first one of them he had decapitated. Of course, he'd mutilated more of them and bashed in the heads of countless more. Fire magic doesn't work against them... or rather it works a little too _well_ on the extremely flammable creatures. Sora found that out the hard way when it turned out that it just makes them that much better at hurting him. There are oozing burns all over his back and shoulder from when a flaming person had grabbed him and tried to tear his throat out with its teeth. He remembers it had been at least twenty minutes before its brain had finally boiled over and that its speed nearly matched his despite the flames.

That is also the one that let him discover that ice magic, with its many geometric and far more importantly _pointed_ barbs, is quite... _effective_ when hurtled through an undead eye socket.

Sora leans over and retches, helplessly puking up a few mouthfuls of congealed yellow liquid at the disturbing thought. The bile splatters on the ground with a nauseating sound that makes his stomach churn and makes him throw up even more. Flashing through his mind are the crunching noises of ice magic into a human, though undead, skull. The sharp blast of ice makes a final tinkling noise in his memory, a nasty contrast to the mashing of brains that followed its path through the skull. He stands there, leaning on the wall for support, for a few minutes before choking down the burning stomach acid that threatens to come out after. It stings his throat but he can't afford to get any weaker. Not as long as he's trapped here for the week or so that Riku and the King had given him to explore the world alone.

A grim smirk twitches across his lips as Sora remembers his arrogance in asking Donald and Goofy to stay home with their families.

He'd thought he was being so _generous_ , letting his friends have a week's vacation from the war. No, he couldn't have foreseen that he would have needed both of them. He even admits after a moment that the entire group of former Nobodies and the rest of his friends would have been better to have than being by himself.

Goofy would have been helpful in shielding him against a group of those monsters and preventing the burns that are currently sapping his strength and leaving smear after smear of blood and pus whatever he leans his right side against. Donald would have been a lifesaver against the flaming and fast ones, with his furious casting of thunder and blizzard attacks in order to protect everyone. Sora definitely wouldn't say no to a healing right now either. And... he wouldn't be so lonely if either of them were here with him.

Sora wipes his mouth with the back of a shredded glove before glancing up at the stars above. The worlds sparkle down at him and he realizes that he's only been here for a day. He has six more to go. Then he'd be back up there with his friends instead of here on Gray Rock. He sits yet again, taking a moment to catch his breath before he can struggle back onto his blistered feet.

As he walks away from the burnt building he had rested near, Sora's feet somehow find a decapitated head and kick it away from the moss-covered roots it had been lying beneath. As he jumps back away from it, the undead woman's brown and gray eyes blink at him once, twice, before it opens its mouth to scream. Even as he watches in stunned silence, the thing attempts to make the screech that called its brethren to her. Sora can only relax when he realizes that due to the way the head had been cut off, it didn't actually _have_ vocal cords anymore. He allows it a few seconds of snapping its teeth at him before holding his hand out to the side.

With a single swipe of an increasingly heavy Keyblade and a loud shatter when he steps on the girl's now useless glasses, Sora bashes the silently snarling head into a fragmented soup of bone and brains and keeps walking. He walks for miles. The silence is only broken by a hiss of blizzard magic, the hollow crunch of his weapon against a human skull, and the moans of the creatures pursuing him. His own footsteps are muffled by the wet mossy, leaf and needle-covered forest floor; the young Keyblade master is more than careful enough to not snap twigs underneath his feet.

Every so often, usually a fair distance from the last one he encounters, Sora has to dispatch or run from another enemy.

All the activity seems to do is slowly drain his stamina and when he runs out of magic, it's all Sora can do to keep himself from throwing the Keyblade into the nearest patch of trees and falling over in despair right then and there. The weapon feels like it weighs a thousand pounds. His limbs are weak, rubbery with pain and effort, and his eyes droop constantly from lack of energy. If anyone could see him, they would easily mistake him for one of the creatures that he was running from.

He slams his palm into his forehead, cursing violently with the added pain before looking around helplessly. If Sora can't find a place to sleep and _soon_ , he would probably end up killing himself in the next enemy attack. Food can only be a secondary concern as the exhaustion is enough to make him want to pass out right where he stood. The boy scans the area rapidly, tearing up when he can't seem to find a cave or a clearing or something, _anything_ , to keep him safe and hidden while he slept.

In desperation, Sora stumbles over to the tallest tree in his nearest area and forces himself up into its branches. Twigs and dried leaves crumble and collect into his spiked hair as he rubs the skin on his arms and legs raw on the rough bark. He's sure he can feel himself bleed onto the branches but he keeps climbing, only stopping when he reaches the highest one he can safely rest on. When he's finally up there, Sora figures that he better secure himself properly or risk a nasty skull-splitting fall.

The belts from the three fairies work well enough as make-shift safety harnesses, especially since his sleepy mind somehow figures out a way to clip them together without tying them.

Finally feeling at ease with sleeping in the branches of the pine he'd chosen for safety, Sora's exhausted body shuts down, leaving his mind to rest for now.

He dreams of his friends, of walking with Kairi down to one of the several beaches of their island home. But slowly, ever so slowly, his fantasies of playing in the sand and water warps into the forest that is his reluctant sanctuary. His simple beach blackens and twists into a vast pine forest as far as the eye could see. Clean white sand turns into leaf-covered ground, palms into pines with bloodstains on each and every one of the innocent-looking branches.

He screams in agony as a darkened version of his friend attacks him, forcing him to wield his weapon against her. Sora's voice cries out her name as Kairi's shade rips apart his chest, knocking him to the ground and splattering blood over the rotting leaves.

Sora wakes up with a start, very nearly tumbling off his branch and onto the ground below. For a moment, all he can hear is his own racing heart pounding blood through his veins, each hard beat reminding him that he is still alive. He catches his breath slowly. Sweat pools and then cools on his burning skin. Shakily, he undoes the first of the two belt contraptions he fastened himself to the branch with and sits up.

Kairi, in his dream at least, had ripped his heart out of his chest and devoured it whole. A lot more merciful than the creatures that always went for the throat or a limb first. He doesn't know either to be grateful that it had done that or terrified that even his dreams aren't a safe place anymore.

Sora glances down the leaves to spot a single boy standing beneath his tree. The child seems blind and he immediately realizes that he is in fact one of the undead. As if sniffing him out, the maybe five or six year old boy raises its head and stares emptily up at the needles. Its yellowed teeth snap and snarl towards the heavens and towards the teenager hiding safely within the tree's branches.

Sora stays silent, his hands on the belt buckles keeping his legs pinned to the tree branch. He is still, unmoving even as the boy's hands claw at the bark. Blue eyes follow and stare into gray as the creature circles the tree once, twice, and a third time. After this last loop, the undead seems to give up and wanders away, its teeth clicking and chattering and its voice growling into the distance until it finally fades away into nothingness.

He waits for a long time until he is sure that there is no other unexpected "company" trying to sleep over with him.

When Sora finally regains the strength and assurance that he won't be attacked as he climbed down, he undoes the final strap and returns his belts to their proper places on his clothes. He stretches and examines his stiff body. Upon checking the burns, he finds that they had healed into a hard, yellow crust and if he sniffed his arm, he couldn't quite make out the scent of rot. He spits out a curing spell, the strongest in his arsenal, and even this faint smell fades. He's still pretty sore, though.

Back to more or less full strength, the young Keyblade master rummages through his pockets to see exactly how many healing potions he had brought with him.

It takes a few minutes to scour each pocket and make sure he didn't miss the smallest ones, but the end result is a decent number of restoratives, a sad handful of magic replenishers, and four elixirs that he'd been planning to use in an emergency. He's afraid of them now.

The familiar medicines have changed on him. When he had first gotten here, he had been surprised to see that the gummi-like candies changed into test tubes and syringes. Only the potions have stayed the same, and even they're so off that it makes him queasy to think about drinking one. The bright red liquid, cheerful in an odd way, has turned into a shade closer to that of blood than the soda-like drinks he used to sip with ice on warm Destiny Island days. To take an Ether, he has to inject himself now. It frightens him to see his familiar friends turned into something darker than their old selves.

He doesn't want to take them. He's scared of what'll happen if those liquids make their way into his bloodstream. But Sora hooks one of the Ethers to his belt loop anyway, wrapping the tube up in one of the smaller straps that originally had been around his chest and arms.

As soon as he's done that, he removes a potion for breakfast and starts the day by walking forward.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three

It's hours before he finds another one of them.

Unfortunately for Sora, it's fast. _Insanely_ fast. When he spots it, he already has his Keyblade out and in his hand, ready to cast a blizzard straight to the damned thing's brain. But this one is different than the shambling corpses he's already met. This one, a twenty something year old with the remains of a red t-shirt and blue jeans rotting on his body, looks fresh.

Its eyes are more of a normal dark brown than the gray cataracts that fills the irises and pupils of all of his previous opponents. Unlike those monsters, this one isn't twitching and there is none of the spasming teeth gnashing that is always directed his way just before the attack. There are no torn muscles. The body is intact, save for a festered bite wound in his arm that had probably been the thing to kill him, judging from the way that the veins in that arm had turned black.

If Sora had been as naive, no as _stupid_ , as he had been when he first came to Gray Rock, he would have happily run up to it and tried to make friends.

Now he simply falls still, his eyes the only things moving as the creature pauses, sniffing the air hesitantly. The creature blinks once, twice, before its lips twitch into the most natural smile that Sora has ever seen. Unlike the snarls that he'd seen on the other monster's faces, this one almost looks human, which is the most terrifying thing he'd ever seen.

Then it's on him, its hands balled into claws and attempting to catch and scratch him.

It moves faster than a Heartless, even faster than the twisting Dusks that are nearly impossible to hit without sliding backwards behind them. It reaches for him, attempting to snatch a handful of his clothes and drag him forward. As Sora ducks and weaves out of the creature's reach and more importantly, its chopping jaws, it lets out a vicious shriek that very nearly leaves the boy collapsed on the floor clutching his ears in agony. At the start of the scream, it's nearly three feet away from him.

At the end of it, it's less than six inches.

Sora is sent tumbling to the floor, the undead man pounding on his chest and screeching that paralyzing scream over and over as it tries to get past the Keyblade that's stopping its hands from getting their prize. For what seemed like hours, all Sora can hear is the clanking of fingernails against metal and eventually, the sounds of them being ripped apart and torn off by that same pole. It doesn't stop even when its appendages start to be worn down to the bone. And throughout all this, it doesn't stop screaming.

Finally, _finally_ , Sora is able to throw his hand up to the creature's face and shout out a Thunder spell. He'd never been good at aiming without his Keyblade but the single strip of electricity hits its mark dead on. The sound of its brain frying and then exploding out of its cranium is the only thing he can hear through the sharp ringing in his ears triggered by the last of its screams.

The body collapses onto him, still twitching from the jolt he'd given it and on fire from the neck up. Bile threatens to come up but all Sora does is roll the corpse off of him and to smear a few traces of gray matter and brown hair clumps off of his clothes. He looks over his handiwork with a stomach-churning mixture of pride over how well he'd done without his Keyblade, revulsion that he'd actually _managed_ to _**kill**_ it like this, and pity for the young man that had ended up being nothing more than a flaming corpse.

Despite the overwhelming dizziness and wobbliness, Sora retreats to another tall tree, climbing up its branches to hide from the creatures that would come running at the sound of the battle.

Slowly, his hearing comes back.

The first thing he hears is his own panting and the sound of the pine needles rustling around him. Next comes the confused moaning below him and near the tree where he'd left his smoldering new friend. Sora knows that it'd be suicide to go back down now. So he waits, his still shaking arms wrapped tightly around the trunk of the tree.

He'd almost died.

He'd been _that_ close to dying.

Tears fall from his eyes as the boy presses his face against the rough bark, silently sobbing in fear and more than a little bit of psychological shock.

Without even really registering his actions, Sora's trembling fingers slowly undo the belts again and strap himself to the tree. There was no way he can even think about setting foot on the ground. He is too scared, had too much adrenaline pumping in his veins, to be able to function normally down there.

* * *

It is several hours before the last of the creatures leaves.

It is another twenty minutes before Sora can unbuckle himself and slither down the trunk. Fear and an overwhelming anxiousness over seeing what his thunder attack had done to that poor thing's body keep him in the tree until finally, he brings up his courage to see what had happened. The soft thud of his feet against a sign nailed to the tree and then the crunch on the needles below is soothing to the boy, the first sign that his miserable week could continue. He glances up at the bright sunshine peeking through the needles and leaves. From the sun's position, it is far past noon.

As he walks forward to check on the lightning-fried man, his arms and legs burn from the thousands of scrapes that he'd gained by holding onto the tree. His knees creak as he kneels down next to the body. Despite the time that had passed, the sharp and stomach-churning smell of burnt flesh is still heavily present. His fingers tremble. Sora still manages to force himself to close the smoldered eyes beneath the gaping hole in the top of the skull. With those dark eyes safely hidden away by blackened eyelids, the boy carefully rearranges the torn clothes and pats down the pockets to find an identity.

There is nothing to mark this one's grave. He knows he is being irrational to want to dig one for this one when he didn't bother to for the others he had run away from, that there is no difference between the fast one and the rotting shamblers that he had left to decay in the forest. But for some reason, this one deserves a grave in his mind and Sora can only remove a blackened card with a name on it from a wallet he finds in its pocket and place it gently on its chest.

After rearranging its hands to cup the card to prevent it from being blown away in the wind, Sora walks off in search of food.

There's a heavy weight on the boy's heart. This one was somehow different than the rotting head he had crushed before. That one had been dead, so incontestably _dead_ that it's been a matter of course to write it and all of the others off as monsters. But the man... with the man being so little decayed, it's all too easy to imagine the creature being a regular guy, a normal person who had been going with his own regular day when all hell had broken loose. Maybe it's how close the man had been to Sora's own age that had done it.

As his body automatically keeps moving forward, his mind races with thoughts of the fast one. Had he been like him, trying to find his way out of the forest and back to safety? Or had he been bitten somewhere else and somehow whatever the thing that made these creatures had kept him from rotting and boosted his speed? It, and all the creatures like it, aren't Heartless.

Sora swings his hands up to rest behind his head, thinking out loud to himself idly. Barely whispering to himself, the sound of his own voice comforts him. His mind has been filled with screams for too long. Since he doesn't have anything better to do, he begins to invent an entire back-story for a few of the creatures that he had taken care of in order to give himself a little closure on what he's done over the last twenty four hours.

The glasses-wearing head is a girl who had been friends with the fast one, both of them bonding over terrible writing and bad stories to develop a strong friendship that had lasted until she fell victim to the illness that made the creatures. After a tear-filled good bye and more than a little vicious cursing on her part, she convinces the fast one to tie her to a tree and cut off her head. She changes soon after. Weeks after the fast one left the severed one behind, he falls sick and turns himself. He accepted his fate with peace, knowing that he'll soon be back with the family and friends that have gone on before him.

For whatever reason, the made up story makes Sora feel better.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter Four

After hours of walking and a few more one-sided fights with shamblers that ended with more lightning strikes and ice pinning them to trees, Sora stumbles upon a stream. It is small, barely knee-deep in places, but the sight of it fills the boy with such a powerful longing that he is only barely able to stop himself from stripping and jumping in to get clean. He is covered in filth and so much congealed, black blood that any color that had been on his jumpsuit had been completely dyed.

Instead, he looks around to check if there were any more of them walking around. He goes down on his haunches and pokes into the sandy bottom of the creek in a paranoid attempt to check if there are any hidden beneath the water. Only when nothing snaps up at him and nothing comes out to come after him does Sora remove his shoes and then his socks before wading in.

Coolness surrounds him and the island-raised boy can't help but grin in pleasure as he paddles his way through the water and takes a seat in the middle. Water is his element after all. Now only visible from the neck up, Sora's eyes close. He scrubs at his clothes. It's a very poor attempt to clean them even if they had been normal clothes but the fairies' enchantments help the stains swim out easily enough. Unlike the black that had covered him, the water stains brown.

Sitting there in the stream, Sora can almost imagine that he's in the middle of the pool on Destiny Island's children's island. If he pretends really hard, he can almost hear the soft crash of waves on the sand beach that has been the background music for nearly his entire life. Even the tickle of fish across his body as the tiny animals decide he is no threat and to continue on their ordinary swimming is familiar and welcoming.

For the first time since he's even come to Grey Rock, Sora feels better. Not quite _happy_ , the only way he'll be happy with this place was if Riku and the King came early to rescue him, but _content_.

He dips his head backwards. Cool water soaks the infamous spikes, briefly flattening them down before they spring back to their full glory. He takes a few moments to thoroughly wash his hair. Darkened drops of water splatter against the surface and bits of flesh and strands of Sora's own hair dutifully follow after them.

Having no soap, there is a limit to what Sora can do to clean himself up. Even so, he takes great care of at least washing the Keyblade's shaft and hilt well. More black stains pour from the metal when he summons it, despite how it's been in the alternate space where all Keyblades hide when not in use. He grimaces when he has to manually remove a chunk of one of the creatures' skull from the handle. It seemed that it's only really designed to fight monsters that actually don't linger behind after you kill them.

Flicking the piece of bone off into the distance, Sora spends a good hour or two dozing on and off in the water and casting a few Curaga spells to clean up his wounds and kill off infection before finally, reluctantly, pulling himself out and lighting himself a campfire to dry off.

He strips most of his clothes off, leaving him in little more than his underwear. His eyes close slowly. The boy stretches out in front of the flames and holds his now bare hands over its side. The smoky wood crackles by his fingers, bringing memories of roasting hot dogs and marshmallows with his friends.

The lack of his friends' voices laughing and making jokes near him weighs his heart with misery and a small amount of guilt over wishing that they were here with him. He would give anything to be home or to have either Kairi and Riku or Donald and Goofy with him. Even just _one_ person would make the entire ordeal that much more bearable. He's so lonely he can barely breathe. He's been putting it off, pretending it didn't exist... but now that he was more or less safe...

He wants his mom. He wants to be in bed right now, waking up from a nightmare. He can almost taste the breakfast his mom, after hearing about such a nasty dream, would make for him. He can hear his dad laughing and teasing him not to eat junk food just before bed. He can hear his friends coming in the door. He can... he misses them. He wants to be home. He wants to be home. He just wants to go home.

Wiping the tears off his face, he tucks himself into a ball and sits silently watching the fire consume the greenwood.

The only movement he makes for the next few hours is to dump new twigs into the bonfire and to throw ice magic to any creature that accidentally stumbled upon him, too lost in memories to even bear walking an inch forward. He doesn't want to move. He doesn't dare. The loneliness just might eat him alive if he does.

Night falls all too quickly.

One moment he is staring into the flames listening to the creek bubbling and flowing next to him with sunshine pouring over his bare shoulders, the next he is shivering in the cold and staring upwards to stare at the stars. It is one more night finished. Sora breathes out a sigh of relief as he looks skyward to the worlds that depends on him and on his friends for protection. One more night until he could join them again.

Hunger clenches his stomach, sending it into a needle and pins filled state as he doubles over in pain by the fire. A day without food did that. Sora'd experienced it a number of times when he was with Goofy and Donald on days when they weren't close enough to buy something from venders. Potions, Sora had learned throughout his travels, are great for fixing thirst and stamina. They do nothing to fill your stomach. Ethers, being gummy-like snacks, are better for hunger but only a little bit better. As liquids they only seem to take the edge off and clear his head momentarily.

But with learning comes ways to oppress and so Sora easily manages to conquer most of his hunger with another potion.

He is just sinking the sharp bite of the needle into his arm when he hears a noise coming from some bushes a few feet away on the riverbank. Nearly breaking off the tip into his skin from fright, he is quick to stand and even quicker to draw his weapon. The needle, safely out of his skin, drops harmless to the floor. Blue eyes stare into darkness as he listens desperately for the loud high keening that made up the start of one of their attacks.

Instead, he sees a little girl tiptoe out of the bushes, her bruised gray eyes staring longingly at a potion still clenched tightly in his hand.

With a slight smile and a shy nod towards his hand, she asks Sora if he has any food.

* * *

Though she is disappointed to discover that the "soda" was a restorative and not an actual sweet, she is more than happy to sit with him by the fire and warm up some of the bread she had been carrying in a battered duffel-bag on her back. He shares his potions with her, though the child confesses she far prefers juice to the cotton candy sweetness that was a mega-potion.

Over the next few hours and over potions and toast, Sora gets to know the little girl very well.

Her name, oddly enough, is Feralis. With tangled black hair and an untrusting look in her odd eyes, she fit the 'feral' part of her name well. She looks and acts like a wild housecat. It takes a while to even get that little tidbit out of her. But after at least an hour of giving her potions and toasting her bread for her and even a little bit of storytelling, she slowly warms up to him and eventually gives him the name.

("My name's Feralis. F-E-R-A-L-I-S."

"My name's Sora, it's nice to meet you, Feralis!"

"That's a dumb name.")

She soon takes up the conversation herself, pestering the boy with what feels like a hundred questions without stop. Gamely, Sora attempts to answer each one honestly and gives back as good as he gets. He summons his Keyblade for her at one point when she declares that she doesn't believe him after explaining what he's doing here in Gray Rock. Although Feralis can't hold it, she just mildly agrees that he did in fact, have a Keyblade.

("Keyblades aren't real."

"Why not?"

"Cause it's dumb. _You're_ dumb, Sora."

"Okay, so if I can bring it out to show you, you'll believe me?"

"Uh huh. But you can't."

"Why can't I?"

"Cause you're ly-! … Okay, I guess you do have a Keyblade.")

She proceeds to inform him, when he mentions that he knows several princesses, that the Queen has just taken the throne and that she is one of the most beautiful women in Gray Rock. There is an odd look in her eyes as she says this, as if enraged with the unknown woman. Sora finds it strange that when he tries to get the name of the Queen, being interested in the culture of the world, that Feralis spits angrily on the ground and changes the subject to something else.

("You know, I know lots of princesses. I even know a Queen. I saved her with this."

"Oh yeah? Gray Rock has one."

"A princess, Feralis?"

"Tch. No, not anymore. A Queen. Long may the beautiful Queen reign over us with her vast amounts of wisdom. Most fairest of all and all that."

"Uh... wow... she sounds... nice. What's her name?"

"... tell me about your princesses, Sora?")

But when the topic falls onto their families, the girl falls silent. For a long while, they have a very one-sided conversation over Sora's mom and dad and his friends and even the two that practically have raised him since he was fourteen. She says almost nothing during this time. Instead, she just nods and grimaces in the wrong places and mumbles things to herself.

Eventually, long after Sora grows uncomfortable and reluctantly regales her with a story of his dad taking him fishing, she admits that she didn't have a family anymore. That they've turned into monsters, too. Though she uses a very specific word for them, the brief description that she uses to retell how her brother turned and then bit their younger sister is the same as the creatures that Sora had encountered through the last two days.

("I don't got one."

"Huh?"

"My family's gone. They turned into biters."

"Oh... oh, I'm so sorry, Feralis..."

"... My big brother turned first. He... he got bit when he went into the city. Annie was in her crib, sleepin', when he came home. I thought he got a cold. I... I... I went to the doctor to go get 'im medicine and he ate it but one day he just didn' wake up and I kept asking Kieran to wake up and he wouldn't... And then he did and he came back _wrong_ and he bit Annie and then when I pulled her 'way from 'im he screamed at me and... and... and... she got sick too and she died and they both turned... I couldn'... I couldn' help either of 'em, I just... ran... I ran and ran and ran but Kieran kept _followin_ ' even after I locked 'im in the bathroom... I was _scared_... I was so scared I only grabbed the groceries and ran... I-I-I l-left Annie on the floor and he stepped on her and I heard her _**breaking**_ and I didn' _mean_ to, Sora, I didn' mean to!)

Her voice halters, stutters, and breaks constantly throughout her story, ending with the child weeping on Sora's shoulder after he scoops her up and very gently hugs her. Her tiny body is burning hot. As they sit there together in the firelight, he can feel her shivering into him along with her tears burning down into his shirt.

But he doesn't mind.

All the young Keyblade Master does is pick her up and walk her up and down the riverbank. He isn't too comfortable with having to do this. He really isn't the kind of person that can easily give out this kind of familiar affection. Any time that Kairi cries, he usually runs and leaves Riku behind to talk to her.

But this time there is no Riku. Only Sora as he weakly tells her that she'll be okay and that he's here to talk to if she really wants and um, it's okay if she wants to cry a little longer, really.

All the while he stutters out his apologies and condolences, the child whispers the rest of her story to her new friend. She tells him all about her beloved big brother and sweet baby sister, their triumphs and their flaws. It's clear from her voice that she misses them just as much as Sora misses his own family. He can't help but hug her a little tighter. When she finally dozes off against his shoulder in the middle of a long winded story of her sister's first steps, the fire has long since died and there are increasingly louder moans coming from all around them.

He retrieves his jacket and most of his belts.

With care to not disturb the sleeping girl and with great difficulty, Sora scrambles up the branches of an other tree and straps himself in. He tucks her in a more comfortable spot on his chest and drapes the jacket over them both. Leaning back and wrapping his arms around the child's waist, the boy is finally able to fall asleep himself.

Throughout the night, he barely stirs, not even when he feels a slight pressure to his shoulder, merely twitching as the sensation disappears. He subconsciously dismisses it as an insect bite before falling deeper into dreams.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter Five

When he wakes up, Sora is completely alone.

Left shivering in just his boxers, it only takes a moment to realize that his arms are empty and his jacket gone. He rips off the belts and swings down from the branch to nearly land on the girl's duffel. The bag is opened to reveal a cloth inside. Bending down to inspect the contents, he realizes that all of his restoratives, even the Elixirs, have been wrapped inside of the missing jacket and then jammed inside.

He scratches his hair in confusion before jumping back to his feet. Glancing around, the boy only sees the ashes of his campfire. There are no footprints anywhere to mark where Feralis had gone to. The moment he takes a step forward, Sora suddenly lets out a pained groan and glances down to a now throbbing shoulder.

There is a tiny imprint of teeth in his skin.

He jumps in surprise but that only makes the scab covering the bite burst open, letting out a fresh spew of fluid. Immediately, Sora grabs a handful of moss from the tree and rinses it in the river, applying it to the wound and pressing hard against it. Within minutes, the blood stops but the questions churn uneasily in the boy's mind.

Where had she gone?

Why would she bite him and then leave all her belongings behind for him?

Has she been sick?

There is a nasty, nagging feeling in Sora's mind as he ponders the meaning of the bite. He can only half-remember something and that only partly remembering bothers him as he slips his shirt and shorts on. After making fast work of burying his campfire and tugging on his socks and shoes, Sora has to stop and lie down, a sudden dizziness and headache pounding at his temples.

He didn't feel well. He _really_ didn't feel well.

It takes the boy a few moments to blink himself back into awareness and to finish putting all his straps to their proper places. His fingers tremble uncontrollably as he buckles them in. It takes him about three more minutes to do this simple task than it had the day before. His vision throughout this flickers on and off between his normal clarity and a disturbing blur of almost blindness.

All the young warrior knows is that he is suddenly tired.

He'd just woken up but somehow, Sora finds himself placing his cheek against the cool sand of the riverbank and closing his eyes. His eyelids are heavy. The last thing he hears is his own labored breathing as he struggles to fill his lungs with oxygen and the cheerful bubbling of the stream next to him.

* * *

He wakes up again, many hours later, to find himself staring up at the sky with his hands outstretched towards it. He's rolled onto his back at some point during his sleep and strangely enough, put on both gloves.

Sora shivers in the cold though the sand under his body feels burning hot to the touch.

He lowers his hands and forces himself up, stumbling over his own feet as he wanders to the duffel-bag and unwraps his jacket from his potions. Picking it back up, Sora wanders back to the side of the stream and stares at it for a moment. He can't remember what he had been doing. His mind is nothing but a haze, unfocused and dim as he looks into the depths of the water. He coughs once, twice, before falling to his knees.

Shaking all the while, Sora manages to put his jacket back on before falling back into unconsciousness.

* * *

The fast one's arm is marked by a bite.

The Keyblade master is standing in the middle of a burnt ruin when the thought wakes him up. He coughs out a black liquid as he slowly stumbles back into full consciousness. The fever is worse. Sora's skin feels like it's been coated in blizzard magic. He walks towards the collapsed window of the small room, wanting to check if he was still near the stream. With every step he takes, the bite on his shoulder throbs angrily and makes him want to rip his skin apart in an attempt to pull it off of him.

Somewhere in the furthest part of his mind he knows that this would be a horrible and _painful_ idea and that even further blood loss will just make the fever worse. Sora hacks up a mouthful of something that looks like black tar. A fever. He's woken up with a bite on his shoulder and within a day, develops a bad fever and a cough. He wraps his arms around himself, feeling for all the world like he's back in Christmas Town, though this time without the protective layers of Donald's disguise spell.

Feralis's the one who did this.

She did this to him. It's her fault.

He's cold.

So cold.

So _cold_.

Sora stares out the window only to discover nothing but trees as far as he can see. Turning around to face the other side of the room reveals the same story through the collapsed part of the house. He'd apparently left the stream behind a long time ago; he couldn't even hear it bubbling.

He leans his head against a larger piece of the shattered window, moaning in relief over how warm the glass was. Sweat pours from his skin, particularly his forehead, and leaves him half-blind.

Once again, Sora finds himself sinking to his knees. His eyes flutter closed as his head hits the corner of an especially large dictionary and with a last, sighing breath, he falls right back into unconsciousness.

So cold… he's just so cold...

* * *

He stands staring at something in the forest, shivering as he reads to himself. It is an old and faded sign that has his attention, marked by large golden letters proclaiming the rule of the Princess Reiotta and nailed to the side of a tree like all of the other ones he'd seen and ignored. This is the first time he's really looked at one since he's left the town. Sora briefly registers that this Princess has to be the queen that Feralis had been talking about.

He turns and gibbers to the side of the sign, suddenly seeing the girl looking at him. She is faded and gray, twitching as the boy coughs violently and spits up blood. He laughs when she lets out a strange noise and then shakes her head. Sora grins and tells her that the Princess has a very pretty name, just like she did.

The next second, he finds himself tumbling to the ground, unable to fight against gravity's power. As the world fades back to black, he hears is the sound of small footsteps crunching against pine needles and then the last thing he feels the touch of a cool little hand on his cheek. A low growl is the last noise he hears before the footsteps go away.

He wakes up huddled on a small bed, choking on the coughs that rocket out of his throat. He tastes something metallic. There's a foul smell, something sour and rotting near his head. Leaning over the edge of the bed, Sora vomits heavily onto the floor, a syringe falling from his hand and its full vial shattering on the tiles beside his feet.

A hazed thought flickers through his head that it looks so pretty as it splatters on his shoes.

Hurt. Everything hurt. Everything feels _awful_.

Why couldn't they let him sleep? He just wants to sleep. Sora just wants to put his head down and sleep, even if he has to lie down in the glass and ether spill. He wants to sleep, he wants to sleep, he wants to _tear apart something with his teeth and scream and **scream** and **scream** and his head hurt **hurt** **hurt** and he wants to go to sleep, why couldn't they just let him **sleep** -?_

Gray begins to fill his vision, Sora can see the remains of what looked like multiple meals on the floorboards near him. His eyes close just as a second wave of bile begins its all-too quick ascent from his stomach.

* * *

He hears voices.

Sora moans softly as what feels like knives stab every inch of his body, filling his skin with tiny needles of red hot pain. There are voices around him as he stares up at the night sky above him. Each star is multiplied and blurred into a dozen more. As he listens, the voices fade in and out of clarity, each one debating nastily about what to do with him.

Sora finds himself climbing out of bed, slowly making his way towards an open window on the far side of the room as yelling begins to emerge from somewhere next to him.

He's so cold, he has to move, he has to _go away before they ate him and **ripped** him -_

* * *

He is wedged into a hollow beneath a tree's enormous roots. Rough bark and needles scrape at his exposed back, his shirt folded messily into a mock pillow under his head and his jacket draped over him in a mock blanket. There is a strong smell of a wild animal, of fur and urine but Sora can't see if there is one in there with him. Maybe the hollow's a wolf or fox den but the animal had been chased out. Either way, he slowly takes inventory of all of his body parts to check if he's been in a fight.

He has no fresh wounds other than scrapes and bruises that could have been from anything from falling in the forest to being beaten.

The only new development is that the bite on his shoulder now aches dully instead of sharply. He presses a hand to it. It is mostly a scab now, half-healed but still covered in a dried layer of yellow pus. He wipes at his face. Beads of sweat the size of bullets smear into a puddle on his hands, though Sora just dries them on his shorts before curling back up beneath his jacket. It is warm thanks to the fairies' spell and he is almost comfortable.

He's cold.

He hacks up another mouthful of slime.

He wonders how he'd gotten there.

As soon as the question flickers across his mind, he vaguely remembers wandering through the forest, running from voices yelling at him to return, that it'll soon be over for him and that it was alright. The memory ends by him tripping over a tree root where he'd discovered the hollow.

Sora shuts his eyes again and wheezes, shivering from the fever.

 _It's so cold, he wants nothing more than to sleep -_


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter Six

When he wakes up again, he is talking to Riku and he's finally in his own bedroom, It doesn't take him much time to tell his friend of everything that's happened while Sora was in Grey Rock. Riku just nods as Sora angrily spits out his story, and he doesn't seem to mind when the younger boy's voice rises in outrage over all of the monsters he'd had to fight because of Riku's taking everyone to Yen Sid instead of going with him. Sora ends up admitting that he just wanted Donald and Goofy to have time with their families and apologizes for being so arrogant and selfish. He even takes back the joke they shared before leaving him, one where the two friends had said that this would be Sora's new Mastery Exam.

Sora spends the next few minutes crying on his friend's shoulder as Riku sits still next him and telling him over and over that it was a bad joke and that he's sorry. The younger boy begs his friend to take home and repeats that he wants this entire mess to be over. Even further details of the last three horrible days are blurted out, including that he's been bitten by a little girl and spent a day hiding from strangers.

Riku informs him calmly that he's done very well to fight for so long on his own and that he's very proud of him. Sora asks if he could go home yet or if he has to wait the entire week. There is a mildly guilty look on the older teen's face as he sighs and turns the conversation over to Kairi, who'd just walked in.

She proceeds to sit at Sora's bedside, quietly chatting about what's been happening since he's been gone. The Princess goes to great lengths to tell Sora all about Donald's and Goofy's visits with their families, though she doesn't quite remember the name of Goofy's son. Apparently the Duck triplets, Huey, Dewey, and Louie have gotten into a great deal of trouble over learning magic. To Sora's delight, each of them specializes in a different branch of magic. She goes into great detail over how they are all eager to see him get out of bed and visit so that they can play together.

All the while, her fingers are intertwined with his, soothingly rubbing the back of his hand with her thumb as they talk. Sora soon starts telling Kairi about his adventures in Grey Rock, much to her mixed anger and pride as she learns about the undead wandering through that small world. She is angry, righteously angry about what has happened so far. Kairi personally checks the bleeding bite and the oozing spots where he had jammed needles into his skin and informs him that all of his injuries are well onto its way on the road to recovery and that she is very proud of him for making it home to her.

They embrace, each teen holding onto the other one tightly as they joke and play around on the bed. Riku, silent up to this point as Kairi gets caught up, bursts out into laughter as Sora is sat on due to a misplaced tickle attack and protests loudly that Kairi ought to get the hell off of him before he suffocates.

The three friends spend a good couple of hours just playing together until Sora's eyes finally become heavy, slowly closing as he drifts back into unconsciousness on his friends' shoulders.

He wakes up screaming to hail the all powerful queen and then begging for Donald and Goofy to help him, that he doesn't want to be here anymore, that he wants to go home. Let him go home, let him go home, please, Oh God, let him go home. Then the situation strikes him as hilarious, sickeningly _hilarious_ , and Sora starts laughing and screaming and crying over and over. He's unable to stop. Cramps rack his body, contorting it painfully every time he takes a breath. His eyes roll into the back of his head as he finally spasms into a full blown seizure and then, mercifully, passes back out.

He is alone again when he wakes up.

He is no longer in his bedroom. Instead, he's in the kitchen of an abandoned building surrounded by the empty remains of what looks like half a dozen cereal boxes. For the first time in a full day, his head is clear. He is no longer shaking. There's no more sweat pooling all over his body and his clothes are fairly dry. His skin feels grimy, though, as if he hadn't bathed in a long time.

Sora coughs once, experimenting to see if the black tar will come back up.

But nothing other than completely normal spit comes up.

He wipes his mouth and pulls himself up using the edge of a counter. As he looks around, he can see the evidence of someone, probably him, living there for a while. Black stains litter the floorboards, though it's kind of obvious that he's tried to wipe them up from various dirty rags near them. There was no soap in sight. With nothing better to do, Sora drops to his knees and starts to clean.

As he wipes the floor with some of the cleaner rags and takes breaks whenever he gets tired, he slowly pieces together the events of the last few days. It is clear that he is still in Gray Rock. When he walks his way towards the window and scoops up some dirt on the windowsill, he could see the sky was still a deep dark gray. And this sky feels just slightly different. But it's a common feeling that he associates with all worlds that aren't Destiny Islands, so he dismisses it.

A frown crosses his lips briefly as he figures out that his seeing Kairi and Riku is an hallucination brought on by the fever. So is waking up in his bed. But other parts of the dreams are harder to dismiss. When he checks for evidence of sleeping in the tree hollow, there are indeed a number of pine needles and other tree leaves in his hair and dirt all over his back and shorts.

If Sora is going to be honest with himself, he can admit that maybe his meeting and hearing different people could have been another fever-induced memory.

He rubs his shoulder, now healed into a pink scar.

There is something bothering him as he tosses the garbage into a corner and finishes wiping things down.

His wounds normally didn't heal that quickly. In fact, even though the bite had barely broken the skin, it _should_ have taken almost a week to turn into a scar. Instead, Sora's sleeping with a bleeding bite one night and waking up the next day with a shiny new scar. There are random points in time, though, where he vaguely remembers it being less healed.

Taking a seat on the bed, the boy plops a box of cereal next to him. There's more than ten boxes in the cupboard and even though Sora can't _quite_ read the letters, he quickly figures out which ones taste the best through sampling. A lot of sampling and then resampling just to be sure. Removing a handful of sugary clumps from inside, he pops them in his mouth individually as he tries to sort out his problems.

One, he'd woken up alone in this cottage.

When Sora had taken his little cleaning sweep around the small room, it had been easy to figure out that he's now in a one-room cottage. All of the pots, pans, knives, and other cooking utensils are jammed on one wall of the room while the bed is on the opposite. There's even a tiny bathroom on a third wall. The fourth wall, closest to the kitchen wall, is nothing but cupboards and closets, holding food and spare clothes respectively.

But other than signs of his own intrusion, there is nothing to show that there was someone else here. No dirty clothes, no dishes, not even different traces of vomit.,, though Sora probably couldn't tell if it was different, honestly. If it hadn't been for the bite itself, Sora would have sworn that he's been alone for the last three days. But there _had_ been someone, there had been a little girl with him for a single night before the fever started. Sora knows that there is more than a small chance that Feralis's the one that bit him.

He just doesn't know why it had caused such a nasty fever though he remembers the image of the fast creature's arm being marked by a bite, too.

Setting that aside for now, the Keyblade Master now turns to the problem of the scar. He chews thoughtfully on a mouthful of cereal. After taking off the sweat stained and filthy jacket and t-shirt he'd been wearing for the last few days, Sora wipes off the dirt on shoulder to better inspect the scar. It is just as shiny and pink as he suspected, which sends a sinking feeling into the boy's heart.

Five days. Had to be.

Judging purely by the wound, he's been in and out of the fever for at least five days. Sora's magic reserves are full, despite how many Ether-syringes he had ended up using in his hallucinations. He hasn't used any of it for at least three days so this healed more or less naturally. His hand drops from his shoulder and he feels cold from shock. He tucks his hands behind his knees and draws up his legs to his chest. He's crying now. He takes several shallow breaths in a failing attempt to calm down.

He's missed the deadline. He's _missed_ the deadline. He's freakin' _trapped_ here.

With those monsters roaming the forest, there's no way that Riku and the others could have gotten through to him. There can't have been a single clue other than footprints to tell them know where he's gone to. His ice magic normally melts within two days if not sooner and any traces of lightning would be few and far in between. Sora finds himself slamming his hands into his calves for his stupid reliance on blizzard.

Over and over, he beats a pattern of black and purple on his skin as he thinks hard about how quickly Riku would have herded everyone back on the ship.

Only after Even or maybe even Ienzo had gotten some hard data on what causes the dead monsters to rise up would they even attempt a rescue mission. That of course, is even if they think Sora is still alive. It is only too easy to imagine them finding the campsite he had slept in by the stream and finding some puddles of black liquid that he'd vomited up. They could have very well written him off as a goner.

Even if they didn't, Sora realizes that he in no way _wants_ his friends in Grey Rock. His teeth clench in a fierce scowl as he imagines Kairi, Kairi who can barely even summon her Keyblade without duress, facing up against one of those creatures. This thought makes him stop beating himself.

No.

He'll find another way back into the town and another way to signal where he's been. A note or maybe a signal fire? Sora knows how to build a fire. Gears spin in his head as he thinks about how much furniture, how much _wood_ furniture, would be in a single town even one as small as Grey Rock is. The pyromaniac in him is grinning gleefully at the idea of how big of a blaze he can make with a single well-aimed Firaga and a pile of chairs. Sora inhales sharply.

But to get to that signal fire, he'll first have to make it back through the forest.

Back through the monsters. Back through the blood and guts _, and he didn't want to go back there,_ he _**didn't**_. He'f do anything as long as he didn't have to go back through that. But Sora knows he has no choice. He _has_ to go home.

* * *

 **My apologies for taking so long to update. Personal reasons. I've left this author's note here to say that I'm still working on the second part of this fic - ooooh, boy, wonder who's totally up for that one? - and that this part is finished. Just need to edit and upload; I'll make the effort to do it every Sunday for the next few months.**

 **A quick word about characterization before I go. Some of you guys might be a bit annoyed by how freaked out Sora is at times in this. Well, wouldn't _you_ be? The kid's only fifteen and yeah, he's got plenty of tricks up his sleeve but Jesus, he's in a war-zone kinda area. There's zombies everywhere, man, and not the "Warm Bodies" kind. There's evidence throughout the first game that Sora isn't the formidable badass/idiot that he's portrayed as in fanfiction. He's just a regular kid in a very bizarre situation... and well, with time he got used to his new situation as Keyblade Master/Wielder. **

**Minor sidenote/ramble: Sora's a Master in my eyes. Screw Dream Drop Distance; he's been in exactly the same situations as Riku and more, but he gets shafted for it? Seriously? Yen Sid, step up your game and let the coconut-head take up his rightful mantle.**

 **So yeah, he'll get used to it eventually and stop having panic attacks. But remember, he's still fairly weak from his illness, even if it only took a chapter to clear up. There'll be mentions of that all throughout the rest of the fic. Oh... and as for the pyromania... I firmly believe everyone has an inner pyro. Make of that what you will and I hope you guys review and comment and all that fun, delicious stuff. Byyyye.**


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter Seven

As he sinks into the warm embrace of his bed, Sora wraps himself in several layers of blankets that he'd found in one of the linen closets. The cool wind coming through the cracks in the wood walls are just a little _too_ chilly for someone raised in a tropical climate. Even so, he is warmed to the bone from a combination of blankets and from having a nice long hot bath.

Outside, he can hear a storm being born. Pitter patters of rain strike the windowpanes and off in the distance, there are the faintest drums of thunder. It's an old and familiar lullaby to the boy, one that he'd stay up late to listen to with his best friends when they were little. As he listens, his eyes automatically fall to the clothes he'd laid on the back of a chair to dry.

Whoever owns this cabin left tons of clothes behind. Sora's found a number of white robes in one closet and, since he doesn't really care what he wore as long as it's warm and dry, he put one of the smallest on. Listening to the rain, he can almost imagine he is back in his bedroom at home, wrapped up in one of his parents' comforters and dozing off with one of his mom's meals in his stomach.

In the morning he'll go find help. There _had_ to be help. It couldn't be all monsters and dead people. Sora's eyes flutter closed, a content smile appearing briefly as he buries his face in his pillow and drifts off to sleep on the storm's lullaby.

Sora spends three days recovering in the cottage.

On the first day after waking up, he spends it in bed, only moving out of it to bathe several times to get the chill out of his bones. He eventually discovers a small room filled with pine needles and wood that he slowly figures out that is a sauna. Once he lights the small fire, he spends a good hour or two sweating out the last traces of his illness. He also finds a bookshelf of books and reads the history of the world over a canned dinner.

Gray Rock is a bit of a strange world that has two very different climates and cultures... though they are both ruled by the same Royal Family. In the exact middle of the world there is an invisible line that divided it into the cooler climate Sora is currently in and a tropical climate that sounds similar to Destiny Islands but as hot as the Pride Lands. The two climates make sense, as Sora's dinners are filled with food that could only grow in a hot climate or in a greenhouse along with normal staples of bread, water, and colder weather vegetables.

The cooler culture is the one that houses the most merchants, according to the book, and is the site of the ruling family's castle. Their coin are small gold disks called the unit, the clip, and the bit. Units are the biggest coin of their currency, and used all over the world, though merchants will also use a bartering system if one doesn't have actual money. Sora finds a few bags of these, though he decides that bartering would be a lot easier than trying to figure out which one was which.

There are only brief descriptions of this upper part of the world, mostly dealing with the current royal family and good tourist spots for visitors to go to when they're in town. It doesn't take long for Sora to finish this part as the author doesn't seem to want to write much about the town, claiming it to be far better understood when explored for one's self, not written about. It did go on to mention a list of rules to keep in mind when exploring Gray Rock Town though Sora skips that in favor of the next section. Probably didn't have much to do with the monsters, anyway, and that's what he really cares about at this point.

The hotter culture is one that was very spiritual, having gods that are based heavily on the Great Sea that filled a large part of that half. Though it was mentioned there were a lot of gods, a lot of pages just give small lists of them and what they were supposed to stand for. He likes the ones that protect heroes, though, imagining his frienc Hercules in various outfits and waving around a magic wand like the Fairy Godmother's to protect them. There are also tons of pictures in his travel book of different men and women displaying the styles of their tribes.

His fingers trace the image of a woman in brightly dyed robes and simple gold jewelry around her arms and exposed legs smiling up at the camera and waving as she holds up a metal-lined drum.

Thoughts of how many of these happy looking people survived the monsters come to mind but the boy quickly banishes them in favor of reading more about them. He learns that one tribe, the Sea Farers, is particularly good at playing music and considered musicians as messengers to the gods. Chuckling at this description, he peers closely at the dozens of instruments in the hands of the gods' messengers. There are countless drums, beautiful and tiny flutes the size of his hands that apparently mimicked the sounds of tropical birds, and various guitars and even sitars that reminded him strongly of Demyx's despite being in black and white instead of blue.

Another tribe, the Beach Walkers, didn't have the same skill as the Sea Farers but made up for it with their beautiful singing voices. The book then proceeds to inform him that when the Sea Farers and the Beach Walkers play in concert, as they do when honoring the Goddess of Storms and her son the God of Flames, it's a common consensus that the gods themselves stop by just to dance.

A smile tugs on Sora's lips as he flips a page to see an image of the two tribes, each one with their heads up to the heavens singing mutely up at him. When he feels a little stronger, he even tries out one of the dance movies depicted by one of the girls of the Beach Walkers, a little twirl and deep bow towards the sky. A crack of thunder answers him, making him laugh and hop back into bed to read more.

A third tribe, he finds out, is one known as the Inn-Keepers. Their religion is specifically about giving those who need aid when needed. When he flips the page, it gives him a start when he sees that the men and women in it are dressed in the same robes he had found in the closet. Sora goes on to read that their religion had them build numerous safe houses for weary travelers, which is where they got their name from. Each house would be filled with lots of dried and canned food, spare clothes, and even supplies that could be taken with you as long as you left a note detailing what you'd taken so that the Inn-Keepers could replace them afterward.

When he reads the part about replacing their goods, Sora reads about a large ledger where all guests were asked to write their name and stories down. The Inn-Keepers apparently love stories and stories about their foreign guests are sacred to them. He then makes the journey back to the bookshelf, sliding out a large black book wedged at the back of it.

Sure enough, it is the Inn-Keepers' ledger. He spends the next few hours figuring out the hundreds of handwriting styles to read their owners' stories. One of the earliest stories is of a pregnant woman going to her sister's wedding that ended with her praising the gods for their servants' hospitality. The cramped, neat writing of a nobleman spends long pages detailing his experience at a ball recently held by one of the Princes for his sister's coronation. Another one, much further on, is of a warrior going out to enroll in a monastery, to seek forgiveness for all of the lives he'd taken in the name of his tribe. Yet another is of a family going with their son apprenticing to join the Beach Walkers, noting that their youngest son had the loveliest voice they'd ever heard.

The farther he goes into the journal, the more and more disturbing the entries got. One notes fearfully that the monsters are chasing him and that he'll be crawling out the window shortly if they don't leave by dawn. He leaves a message for his family saying that he loves them and that he hopes to join them soon enough. Another is of a girl writing down a prayer for all those who made it to the cabin and detailing that she's hidden a number of knives in a linen closet with hopes that someone will find them and protect themselves. She notes with shaky writing that she's been bitten and that she'll be turning within the week. Still another is from an actual Inn-Keeper informing all future residents that they will only be returning every month to replace supplies due to the creatures. This one ends with the fervent prayer of the Goddess of Storms destroying the undead and freeing their world from them. The next one after this is nothing but scribbles that he can't make out, though he is able to read phrases detailing the monsters and a rage filled page cursing Queen Reiotta and the Princes over and over before switching back to praise for the Royal Family. A coherent phrase at the end of this entry remarks that the writer has been bitten.

When he turns one of the final pages, he sees the scrawled handwriting of Feralis herself.

Her story, written in neat pencil, is the same that she had told him save with a few details that she hadn't shared. She writes about him, about Sora's kindness to her despite her being sick and the way that he had comforted her when she cried. Feralis remarks that she slept in a tree with a strange boy a few nights ago who held her throughout her first night of fever and that she prays he'll turn quickly instead of lingering through the coherent fever she's been living in for the last week. Her pity for the weird boy is clear throughout the entire entry, as is her conviction that he's been abandoned by his friends when they left him there.

The girl even admits to biting Sora, to make him turn faster since she figures it is only a matter of time until hunger or thirst kills him. At least this way he'll be in relatively less pain and would join his family soon. She concludes by asking her siblings, Kieran and Annie, to wait for her in the afterlife and hopes that she'll get to meet Sora and his friends, too. Feralis ends it with a single date, a date a few days after she had written it.

When he finishes the pages long entry, Sora finds himself crying.

He wipes his mouth with a heavy hand before gently closing the book and holding it to his heart. The date, as far as he can tell, is the child's estimation of how long she'd last. Somewhere in the woods nearby is his little friend, moaning at shadows and shrieking whenever she found humans.

Sora doesn't really believe in the gods of this world. But he stumbles through a prayer he finds in the travel book anyway, asking the gods that the child believed in to carry her through the river of death to the world of the sleeping to rest with her siblings in peace. He rips out the page and tucks it into a deep pocket before going back to bed and closing his eyes tightly against the images that played in his head.

He mumbles his friends' names for a few minutes before drifting off into a deep, troubled sleep.


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter Eight

The second day he spends taking an inventory for the Inn-Keepers.

The religion, from what Sora is able to read of it in the shelf of books, is really, _really_ nice and he only wants to make their job that much easier for them. After all, the most he could do for their hospitality is to clean up. They'll have enough to deal with with the creatures roaming the forest outside and the boy will rather take his chances outside than give these great people more problems.

His own backpack, pulled out from a cabinet of similar ones, is filled almost to the brim with wrapped packages of canned food and little green bags of something that the Inn-Keepers' ledger called traveler's bread. They look like small crackers and, according to the book, will stay fresh even in the worst conditions. Which sounds really good, considering how wet the world seemed to be. Despite Sora's filling the bag up, there is still plenty of food left over for the next traveler to eat well for at least a week.

The rest of the space and all of the pockets he uses to store tons of different stuff to help him out. Matches, medicinal herbs with directions on how to use them, knives, some length of ropes... He may have been able to use magic but he figured that it'd be far better to save it to attack with. He even finds room in one pocket for a small journal and a couple of pens. Jiminy would kill him if he didn't have at least _some_ record on what had happened to him so far!

It is only when he finishes up the inventory and comparing it to the one left behind in the ledger, does he finally sit down and writes down his own story in the pages of the old book and in his new journal.

Sora admits in the very beginning that the events sound crazy and apologizes for any discomfort he might cause in revealing that there are actually many different worlds. Describing Destiny Islands in length, he jokes constantly throughout the narrative about how colder it was in the upper part of Grey Rock and how he feels like he needs thermal underwear just to live here. He writes extensively about his friends. The adventures they'd gone through both together and separately flows through the small pen, seemingly endless as he writes well into the day and into the night.

Only when he finishes the last page does Sora close the book. His story, culminating in his voyage through Grey Rock, ends with a prayer to the deities of this world. It is a simple and humble request for the Goddess of Storms and the God of Flames in particular, since those two are the only ones he can really remember by name, for protection and for a quick journey home. He even adds a prayer to his own deities and asks for them to see his ship back into a safe harbor.

When this task is complete, he hops back into bed and sleeps soundly, content in the thought that at least there'll be one group of people in the worlds that will know what happened to him.

* * *

The third day passes through almost uneventfully.

He spends it readying his gear and going through various exercises to get back some of his strength. After what felt like the hundredth set of sit ups and push ups, the boy feels ready to fall over. Or throw up. Or both. But even then, he just switches to magic training outside of the cottage. He needs to get back into a good condition, even if it hurt, he _has_ to be ready to fight for his life.

The moment he casts a spell, Sora notices a strange difference between his magic now and the way it had been before his fever. All his ice magic seems a lot thicker now and lightning is even more unpredictable, like they've shot up in power levels and doing whatever they feel like doing. When Sora attempts a Graviga on a nearby tree, he ends up splintering the enormous tree into matchsticks inside of an enormous crater.

He can only stare at the remains of such a large tree before quietly heading back inside and writing down an apology to the Inn-Keepers for breaking their fruit tree. And a promise that he buried a new one nearby and that all it needs is to grow a bit and he was really, **_really_ ** sorry.

Sora says his good byes to the cottage early in the morning, though not without tucking the book that has entertained him so much during his rest into his pocket. It has maps and nice pictures and well, he feels a little better with having something to do when he's forced to climb up a tree. It's been a cool morning and promised to be an even colder day so Sora is quick to dive back into the forest. Chills run up and down the boy's body from just entertaining the idea but the images of his friends' faces keep him going.

Armed with only his backpack and the travel book guiding his steps, Sora walks forward.

* * *

He should have realized something is wrong when a day passes without stumbling across one of the creatures.

Instead, Sora simply thanks his lucky stars and spends a very refreshing night dozing in a tree without a care in the world. But in the middle of the second day away from the cottage, he finally finds himself in a clearing filled with monsters. Each one of the bloated, repulsive things is turned away from him when he comes across the horde. There are dozens of them, each in different states of decomposition. There is one little figure that barely looks like it should be able to stand, because it was little more than bone and strings of rotting flesh clinging to torn clothing. Another looks like he had died only a few days ago and jetted through the meadow with unnatural ease, as quickly as the fast one he'd first encountered... but thankfully rushing off into the woods across from him.

Sora freezes in mid-step, his breath stopping in his throat as he stares at the hundreds of undead peering at him. All of their heads turn oh-so-slowly towards him, all of their rotting gray eyes looking at him. For a few minutes, the two groups only stare at each other in complete, utter silence. Then Sora's foot finally drops to the ground, breaking a twig beneath it with a unnatural, loud _crack_.

The first of the creatures, the closest to the boy, lets out a curious sound, one that was closer to the noise a cat makes when cuddling up to its owner than the blood-chilling shriek that he's come to fear. It had been a boy about half Sora's age. It stumbles towards him, a pale hand outstretched and then grabbing Sora's robe.

It sniffs deeply before tilting its head up towards him. Sora has a moment to process that half of the boy's face has simply slid off of its bones from rot and the maggots are crawling through punctured holes in the papery skin before it butts its head into Sora's stomach. The living boy freezes, nearly sobbing. There is a tense moment where he expects to be bitten again, and this time with very important organs being pulled out where they have no business to be pulled out from.

No, no, no, he mumbles to himself. Not like this, not like this, not like this...

But the undead child just lets out that same purring noise and rubs its cheek against the soft cloth on Sora's belly. It is clear that chunks of flesh are pulling off with the motion when he hears a quiet ripping sound coming from its head. He winces, trembling with disgust. When Sora puts a hand on the thing's matted brown hair and pats it shakily, the child lets out another sound of pleasure and drops to Sora's feet, looking up at him expectantly through glazed over eyes.


End file.
